THE CONDITION OF
THE WORKING CLASS IN ENGLAND
FRIEDRICH ENGELS was born in Germany in 1820, the son of a textile manufacturer. After his military training in Berlin he became Manchester agent of his father’s business, and soon became immersed in Chartism and the problems of the urban proletariat newly created by the industrial revolution. In 1844 he wrote this famous book and by 1848 he was a firm friend of Marx. Their ideas were incorporated into The Communist Manifesto, although the writing of the Manifesto itself was solely Marx’s work. Engels provided Marx with money, and after 1870 spent all his time assisting him in his research and in supplying ideas and leadership to international socialism. After Marx’s death Engels continued his work in Das Kapital, and completed it in 1894, a year before his own death. He also wrote The Peasant War in Germany, The Origin of the Family and Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, and much else.
VICTOR KIERNAN was born in 1913 and studied at the Manchester Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge. After a period of teaching and other work in India he joined the History Department at Edinburgh University, where he became a professor before retiring in 1977. His publications include British Diplomacy in China 1880–1885 (1939, 1970); The Revolution of 1854 in Spanish History (1966); The Lords of Human Kind (1969, etc); America: The New Imperialism (1978); State and Society in Europe 1550–1650 (1980); Colonial Empires and Armies 1815–1960 (1982, 1998); The Duel in European History (1988); a study of the social history of tobacco (1991); two studies of Shakespeare (1993, 1996); one of Horace and his Rome (1999); verse translations of two anthologies of Indian (Urdu) poetry; and four volumes of collected essays, historical or literary.
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First published in Germany 1845
This translation first published in the USA 1886
Published in Great Britain 1892
Published with some revisions in Penguin Classics 1987
19
Foreword, copyright © Victor Kiernan, 1987,
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
EISBN: 978–0–141–90528–0
Contents
Foreword by Victor Kiernan
To the Working Classes of Great Britain
Preface to the First German Edition
Preface to the English Edition
Introduction
The state of the workers before the Industrial Revolution – The jenny – Emergence of the industrial and the agricultural proletariat – The throstle, the mule, the power-loom, the steam-engine – The victory of machine-work over hand-work – The development of industrial might – The cotton industry – The hosiery manufacture – The manufacture of lace – Dyeing, bleaching, printing – The manufacture of wool – The linen trade – The manufacture of silk – The production and manufacture of iron – Coal-mining – The production of pottery – Agriculture – Roadways, canals, railroads, steamboats – Summary – The emergence of the proletariat as a factor of national importance – The middle-class’s view of the workers
The Industrial Proletariat
Classification of the proletariat – Centralization of property – The levers of modern manufacture – Centralization of population
The Great Towns
The impression produced by London – The social war and the system of general plundering – The lot of the poor – General description of the slums – In London: St Giles and the adjoining quarters – Whitechapel – The interior of the workers’ dwellings – The homeless in the parks – Night refuges – Dublin – Edinburgh – Liverpool – Factory towns: Nottingham, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield – Lancashire: general description – Bolton – Stockport – Ashton-under-Lyne – Stalybridge – Detailed description of Manchester: the general system of its building – The Old Town – The New Town – The method of construction of working-men’s quarters – Courts and side streets – Ancoats – Little Ireland – Hulme – Salford – Summary – Lodging-houses – Overcrowdedness of population – Cellar dwellings – The clothing of the workers – Food – Tainted meat – Adulteration of provision – False weights, etc. – General conclusion
Competition
Competition among the workers determines the minimum of wages, competition among the property-holding people determines their maximum – The worker, the slave of the bourgeoisie, is forced to sell himself by the day, and by the hour – Surplus population – Commercial crises – A reserve army of workers – The hard lot of this reserve army during the crisis of 1842
Irish Immigration
The causes and figures – Description by Thomas Carlyle – Lack of cleanliness, crudeness and drunkenness among the Irishmen – The influence of Irish competition and of the contacts with the Irish upon the English workers
Results
Preliminary remarks – The influence of the above-described conditions on the health of the workers – The influence of large towns, dwellings, uncleanliness, etc. – The facts – Consumption – Typhus, in particular in London, Scotland and Ireland – Digestive troubles – The results of drunkenness – Quack remedies – ‘Godfrey’s Cordial’ – Mortality among workers, especially among young children – Accusation of the bourgeoisie of social murder – Influence on the mental and moral condition of the workers – Absence of the necessary conditions for education – inadequacy of evening and Sunday schools – Ignorance – The worker’s living conditions give him a sort of practical training – Neglect of the workers’ moral training – The law as the only instructor in morals – The worker’s conditions of life tempt him to disregard law and morality – The influence of poverty and insecurity of existence upon the proletariat – Forced work – The centralization of the population – Irish immigration – The difference in character between the worker and the bourgeois – The proletarian’s advantages over the bourgeois – The unfavourable sides of the proletarian character – Drunkenness – Sexual irregularities – Neglect of family duties – Contempt for the existing social order – Crimes – Description of the social war
Single Branches of Industry. Factory-hands
The influence of machinery – Hand-loom weavers – The work of men being superseded by machinery – Female labour, the dissolution of the family – The reversal of all relations within the family – The moral consequences of the mass employment of women in factories – Jus primae noctis – The work of children – The apprentice system – Subsequent measures – The facts related by the Factory Report – Long working-day – Night-work – Cripples – Other deformities – The nature of factory work – Relaxation of the whole organism – Special diseases – Testimony of the Commissioners – Premature old age – The specific influence of factory work upon the female physique – Some especially injurious branches – Accidents – The bourgeoisie’s opinion of the factory system – Factory laws and agitation for the Ten Hours’ Bill – The stupefying and demoralizing nature of factory work – Slavery – Factory regulations – The truck system – The cottage system – The comparison of the serf of 1145 with the free working man of 1845
The Remaining Branches of Industry
Stocking-weavers – The lace industry – Calico printers – Staffordshire – Sheffield – Production of machinery – Potteries in the north of Staffordshire – Manufacture of glass – Handicraftsmen – Dressmakers and sewing-women
Labour Movements
Preliminary remarks – Crimes – Revolts against machinery – Associations, strikes – The objects of the unions and strikes – Excesses connected with them – The general character of the struggle waged by the English proletariat against the bourgeoisie – The battle in Manchester in May 1843 – Respect for the law is alien to the proletariat – Chartism – The history of the Chartist movement – Insurrection of 1842 – The decisive separation of proletarian Chartism from bourgeois radicalism – the social nature of Chartism – Socialism – The working men’s views
The Mining Proletariat
Cornish miners – Alston Moor – Coal and iron mines – The work of grown-up men, women and children – Special afflictions – Work in low shafts – Accidents, explosions, etc. – Mental education – Morals – Laws relating to the mining industry – Systematic exploitation of the coal-miners – The beginning of the workers’ movement – The union of coal-miners – The great campaign of 1844 in the north of England – Roberts and the campaign against Justices of the Peace and the truck system – The results of the struggle
The Agricultural Proletariat
Historical survey – Pauperism in the country – The condition of the wage-workers – Incendiarisms – Indifference to the Corn Laws – Religious state of the agricultural labourers – Wales: small tenants – ‘Rebecca’ disturbances – Ireland: subdivision of the land – Pauperization of the Irish nation – Crimes – Agitation for the repeal of the union with England.
The Attitude of the Bourgeoisie towards the Proletariat
Demoralization of the English bourgeoisie – Its avarice – Political economy and free competition – Pharisaic charity – The hypocrisy of political economy and politics in the question of the Corn Laws – Bourgeois legislation and justice – The bourgeoisie in Parliament – A bill regulating the relation of master and servant – Malthus’s theory – The Old Poor Law – The New Poor Law – Examples of the brutal treatment of the poor in the workhouses – The chances of the English bourgeoisie
Index
A NOTE ON THE TEXT
The text printed here is basically the original translation made by Florence Wischnewetzky for the American edition which Engels published in 1886; however, it is taken from the Moscow English edition, whose editors checked it against the German first edition for accuracy, and it has been given some stylistic revision for this Penguin Classics edition by V. G. Kierran.